Growing up in Atlanta, Wonya Lucas recalls that few people on television looked like her.
This, she says, is why Diahann Carroll made such an impression in “Julia,” a pioneering sitcom that ran from 1968 to 1971.
“You could see a fully dimensional Black woman who had power, not by title or position but just by the way she walked through life,” Ms. Lucas says.
As president and CEO of Hallmark Media, a division of Hallmark Cards, Inc., Ms. Lucas, 61, sees value in letting more kinds of people see themselves on screen.
“We don’t all look alike, we’re not all shaped alike, and it’s important that different people get their love story,” she explains.